OPINION:
When Ronald Reagan famously said “a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth,” he could have been talking about the endless negotiations over how to spike Iran’s nuclear program. The talks have been going on for 12 years, and no end is in sight. The talks have not quite covered eternity, but they have taken a long time to produce nothing but hot air.
This past weekend offered a snapshot of the dysfunctional diplomatic blabberfest. A preliminary agreement emerged and disappeared over the course of a single day. The Associated Press reported Saturday that negotiators for the United States and Iran had reached a deal to ship the regime’s surplus enriched uranium to Russia. By doing that, Western powers argue, Iran could demonstrate a willingness to reach a peaceful settlement over long-standing and widespread dread that it was building an Islamic bomb. But a spokesman for the Islamic republic refuted the claim through the state news agency IRNA. “Such news is spread out of political motives and its goal is to tarnish the climate of the talks and make it more complicated to reach a settlement,” IRNA said.
If the proposal to have Iran’s controlling mullahs transfer nuclear fuel to Russia or another other third country sounds familiar, it’s because the proposal has been on the bargaining table, put there by Western negotiators, since 2005. Germany, France and the United Kingdom were jawing with the Iranians then as the EU3 group, before the current “P5 plus 1,” which includes the United States, Great Britain, France, Russia, China plus Germany, was formed to reinforce the resolve of the frustrated Europeans. With Hassan Rouhani as its chief negotiator, Iran rejected the deal because it did not explicitly affirm Iran’s right to continue enriching uranium. It’s no surprise that as the president of Iran nine years later, Mr. Rouhani is still stalling.
Tehran’s diplomatic formula is simple: Raise hopes, dash hopes, raise hopes again. Mr. Rouhani did that Sunday when he threatened to put the issue of Iran’s nuclear program to a national referendum. Ostensibly, this would temper the extremism of hard-liners with the fear that the Iranian people might not back their nukes-or-bust stance. Acting as the good cop to the mullahs’ bad cop is a game of charades, designed to raise gullible Western expectations once more in advance of the resumption of talks in Geneva on Jan. 15. It’s unlikely that a public vote would ever be held, since the hardest hard-liner of them all is Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
Just as Charlie Brown always falls for Lucy’s promise not to pull back the football just as Charlie’s foot is about to meet pigskin, the “P5 plus 1” can’t resist waxing optimistically about a breakthrough. Right on cue the breakthrough breaks down. It’s back to square one. When the parties missed their Nov. 24 deadline for a deal, they simply moved the deadline to sometime next summer. For negotiators, tomorrow is another day. Where have we heard that before?
Hope is always welcome, and a world free of the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran is certainly worth hoping for. But if experience has taught anything, it’s that talking with rogue nations is usually an exercise in futility. Unless the new Congress under Republican control demands tougher economic sanctions in the absence of a deal, Iran will stretch out negotiations until it has what it wants, which is that Islamic bomb. At that point, there will be nothing left to say, except a prayer.
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